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“Is this for Stafford?” Harry asked. By unspoken agreement, both had lowered their voices to almost inaudible levels. “I don’t work for him anymore, and if you were to ask my advice—which I know you have not—you should reconsider it as well.”

That wiped the expression right off Angelique’s face, even though she’d been thinking much the same thing. “Why do you say that?”

Harry sighed. “My grandfather, Lord Camden, is in the Home Office. He works with Sidmouth from time to time. Initially he was very much in favor of this little enterprise of Stafford’s—hell, he gave them my name when they were recruiting agents. But I’ve heard things, Angelique. However they may have begun, they’ve grown reckless. Dangerous. Even Camden doesn’t trust them anymore, and he’s a ruthless old tartar. Whatever Stafford’s asked you to do, be very, very careful how you proceed, especially with regard to someone like Selwyn, who is not only one of them, but like them.”

She let out her breath slowly. “I am trying to be,” she murmured. “That is why I came to you—and why you mustn’t tell anyone I did.”

“You know I never would.” He glanced at Nate again. “I suppose I don’t want to know who you are.”

Nate looked up, his eyes glittering. “Probably not.”

If Harry was surprised by the American accent, he didn’t show it. “I’ll do my best. How should I get the information to you?”

“St. Margaret’s in Westminster,” she said. Stafford had people scattered through half the pubs and taverns in London, but strangely enough he left the churches alone. She didn’t dare come to Harry’s home again. “Will two days suffice?”

Harry nodded and Angelique rose. Nate was right beside her, as quiet as a ghost but clearly ready to leave. Angelique thanked her former fellow agent again, and they left.

They walked because there weren’t many hackneys standing near Harry’s home. It had taken her aback to see how lush his life was now—far better than when they were Stafford’s spies together, running in and out of rented houses, collecting information and changing disguises on little sleep. Harry seemed the same as he ever was, but she felt a prickle of worry that he wouldn’t be so eager to tell her all she wanted to know. What if he suspected why she wanted to know about Selwyn and balked at answering her question? She didn’t think Harry knew she was Stafford’s assassin, but he might suspect.

Unfortunately there was no one else she could ask, and it would take too long to go to Selwyn’s estate to poke around, not to mention call too much attention to themselves. Not only could she not ask Nate to wait that long, every delay was a greater chance Stafford discovered she had turned on him. And that, she shuddered to think, could be fatal to them all.

“Will he help us?” Nate asked, breaking the silence between them.

“I believe so,” she said. “He is our best hope of discovering the truth quickly and easily, since he moves in the same circles as Selwyn.”

Nate nodded. He walked with his head down, his brow lowered in concentration. “Then we have to wait until the day after tomorrow. What shall we do with Dixon until then?”

She sighed. “What we have been doing, I suppose. Perhaps Ian will discover something.”

He grunted. They lapsed back into silence again, walking until finally Nate hailed a hackney. It was late, and not all the streets were as well lit and safe as the one Harry lived in. Not until they had climbed aboard and were rumbling back toward the house did Nate speak again, slowly and deliberately, as if choosing each word with care. “If Sinclair does confirm, in some manner, Dixon’s story, and Wallace provides any insight into Stafford’s motivation that suggests the worst, what are you prepared to do?”

Angelique thought about it. Stafford had been utterly wrong to deceive Nate, who had dealt honestly with him from the beginning. She refused to kill Dixon, no matter what. The sense that he had ordered her to kill a man out of personal, petty vengeance, or for political gain, wove guilt and doubt into everything she had ever done for him. If what Dixon claimed turned out to be true, she didn’t just want to quit Stafford’s service; she wanted him stopped.

“Anything,” she replied softly. “He has made me a killer, and he has yet to reap the consequences.”

“No, no!” Nate shook his head. “You’re not killing anyone again, not him, not for him. That’s not what I meant. What are you prepared for?”

The way he lingered on the word “you” made her look up in confusion. “What do you mean?”

He said nothing for a moment. “It’s just an idea I had. But it would require a great sacrifice on your part, and perhaps it’s unnecessary.”

She frowned. “Sacrifice of what?”

“Of…a great many things.” Nate shook his head. “Never mind. Perhaps it won’t come to it.”

“What do you mean? Tell me,” she said softly.

In reply he put his arm around her and drew her close beside him. “You don’t need my wild ideas when you’ve got enough to worry about.”

“Not all of your wild ideas alarm me.” She touched his cheek and tried to smile. “Some I rather like.”

He didn’t smile back. Instead he caught her hand and raised it to his lips. “This one isn’t so pleasurable—not that I don’t have many pleasurable ideas about you, of course.”

“I can tell it is serious, from the way it has made you so somber.”

He sighed. “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

“I prefer to think it is because I am coming to know you well,” she replied.